A new digital world order

The Parmenides Foundation is founded on the principle that “In an increasingly complex and constantly changing knowledge society thinking is the key success factor in economics, politics and education.” That principle clashes with anti-realist accounts of truth.

This statement in the home page of the website of the Parmenides Foundation sounds like an oxymoron given the name of the Foundation:

“In an increasingly complex and constantly changing knowledge society thinking is the key success factor in economics, politics and education.”

Monism was the central doctrine of the Eleatic school of philosophy founded by Xenophanes (570 – 475 BCE) and was based on the principle that “what exists, can only be one and motionless”. Parmenides (b. 510 BCE), who was a student of Xenophanes, is the best known of the Eleatic philosophers and the one who amended the original doctrine as follows: “what exists, can only be one, motionless, indestructible, immutable, finite and indivisible.” In this way, Parmenides made a clear distinction between Eleatic philosophy and other schools of philosophy of his time, and in particular, took an opposing stand against Heraclitus and his doctrine of universal flux. According to Parmenides, there is no motion, no plurality and no void, and that comprises the basic thesis of the doctrine of monism while it clearly differentiates it from other doctrines.

According to anti-realist Parmenides, change in the world is apparent. The extreme anti-realist account of truth is that every truth is knowable. Fitch’s paradox tells us that if every truth is knowable, then every truth is known. Thus, for Parmenides, one of the most extreme anti-realist of all, there is nothing to learn besides his doctrine of Monism. Anything else is probably some kind of human noise.

It could be true that all knowledge humans accumulate is noise in a grand scheme of things. For Parmenides, the only knowledge possible is to know the One.